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Swipe Typing Keyboards

Discussions center on swipe-based or gesture typing keyboards like Swype, Gboard, and SwiftKey, praising their speed and accuracy over traditional tapping, especially on Android versus iOS.

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Sample Comments

jokermatt999 • Apr 5, 2011 • View on HN

Swype is still an on screen qwerty keyboard, but it's much much quicker. You can essentially mash the keyboard (swipe around haphazardly, actually) and get exactly what you want for longer words. Shorter words are trickier, but it's amazing at getting long ones correct, and thus makes typing much quicker and painless.

jvandenbroeck • Nov 6, 2011 • View on HN

Since I've been using Swype on Android, every "normal" keyboard on a touch device seems primitive. Even the iphone/ipod keyboard to type emails, text messages is to slow.

sid- • Aug 29, 2017 • View on HN

Also Swype or Gboard would thwart it ?

tough_luck • Mar 4, 2018 • View on HN

Google keyboard or Gboard has swype like feature for a while now. Other options are SwiftKey and choorma keyboard

infodroid • Dec 31, 2017 • View on HN

Swipe-based touch keyboards don't work for me. Compared to touch-tapping, I find I have worse accuracy. I also find them much more frustrating, because correcting a swipe mistake is a lot more expensive compared to tap mistake. At least when tapping, I get steady and immediate feedback when spelling out a word, and I can fix a mistake quickly just using backspace and without much thought, and then carry on as usual. But with the swipe keyboards I tried, I find out about mistakes only after

rjh29 • Dec 9, 2024 • View on HN

Have you tried swipe-based input methods? Given a bit of time to learn your style they are much higher WPM and less error-prone than trying to press non-tactile keys on a screen.

stavros • Dec 9, 2024 • View on HN

Are you using an iPhone? iOS keyboards are terrible, to the point where I'm considering switching back to Android. SwiftKey on Android is magical, I just randomly punch keys in the vicinity of the letter I want and it figures out what I mean. I might type faster on Android than on my desktop PC.

dingle_thunk • Oct 25, 2019 • View on HN

Have you tried the iOS 13 keyboard's built in swipe feature?Are you aware of Swiftkey?

piyush_soni • Nov 20, 2014 • View on HN

I swipe heavily (using the original 'swype' app). It's still much faster than the others, and I've tried almost all of them, including the Google keyboard. Also, everyone else who sees me typing using that tries to learn the same. It's really more convenient than traditional touch typing.

massysett • Aug 19, 2025 • View on HN

Even though you can now make the keyboard a small floating one and use swipe typing?